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ctLow's Favourite Quotations

-from various sources ...

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Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting. –John Green

Source Quote
The Dalai Lama If you wish others to be happy: practise compassion.
If you wish yourself to be happy: practise compassion.
Anon. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Philip M. Hauser The only pessimistic voice in 1968, when asked to look fifty years into the future:
Given the present outlook, only the faithful who believe in miracles from heaven, the optimistic who anticipate superwonders from science, the parochial fortunate who think they can continue to exist on islands of affluence in a sea of world poverty, and the naïve who anticipate nothing can look to the future with equanimity.
Phil Barton, Brockville Profanity is a crutch for a conversational cripple.
movie: The Interpreter Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.
Marshall McLuhan I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it.
James Lane Allen Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.
Confucious Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
Sir Richard Branson If you look after your staff, they'll look after your customers. It's that simple.
James Baldwin Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
Anonymous Science doesn't care what you believe.
Traveling Wilburys
Handle With Care
Been stuck in airports, terrorized
Sent to meetings, hypnotized
Overexposed, commercialized
Handle me with care
movie: Pirates of the Caribbean Wherever we want to go, we'll go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs. But what a ship is... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom.
movie: Lord of the Rings
Fellowship of the Ring
  • Frodo: ...I wish none of this had happened.
    Gandalf: So do all that come to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us...
  • Aragorn: What do you fear my lady?
    Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until youth and old age accept them. And all chance of valour has gone beyond recall or desire.
The Eagles, Already Gone .. when you look up in the sky
You can see the stars and still not see the light
... So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key
Captain Jack Aubrey
movie: Master and Commander
Quick's the word and sharp's the action.
Gertrude Stein
Brewsie and Willie
I tell you boys there aint any answer, just you believe me, there aint any answer,... there aint going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that's the answer.
Rebecca Wells
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
  • Life is short, but it is also wide.
  • It's life. You just climb on the beast and ride.
Wendy Mitman Clarke
Chesapeake Bay Magazine
One of the things I love most about boat time is its truthfulness to natural time. The sun goes down; you go down. Sun wakes up; you wake up. With the exception of the full moon, of course, which throws anyone with a passionate bone in their body beautifully out of whack.
"Off the Charts", "Boat is Where the Home Is", April 2007, pg. 128
Captain Kirk
movie: Star Trek V, The Final Frontier
... pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!
movie: Serenity Shepherd Book: I don't care what you believe - just believe - whatever you ...
movie: Serenity Ship's Captain: It ain't all [bugs(?)] and charts, Little Albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, you take a boat in the air that you don't love, shake you up just as sure as a [turn in the whirls(?)]. Love keeps her in the air when she ought fall down. Tells you she's hurting before she [keens(?)]. Makes her home.
Elbert Hubbard To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.
([Unrelated:] It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.)
movie: Sideways Miles: I don't know. It's [Pinot] a hard grape to grow. As you know. It's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's not a survivor like Cabernet that can grow anywhere and thrive even when neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention and in fact can only grow in specific little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing growers can do it really, can tap into Pinot's most fragile, delicate qualities. Only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression. And when that happens, its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and thrilling and ancient on the planet.
My name is Joseph Boyden
Macleans, 2017 Sep.
My own being is not big enough to live in the world acting as if I am complete. I am part.
Jonas Jonasson
movie: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared
Revenge is not a good thing ... Revenge is like politics: one thing leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst.

Sometimes your mouth seems to go its own way while your brain stands still...

He (not Allan, the protagonist) was of course a socialist heart and soul, but if anyone asked him to elaborate, he'd run into problems.

It had been exciting, the entire journey, but nothing lasts forever, except possibly general stupidity.
Sarfraz Manzoor One of the glories of male friendship is that it is relatively low maintenance: no birthday cards, no Christmas cards, no get well soon cards; no apologies, no explanations and no formalities.
(Not sure that I completely agree, but I don't completely disagree. ctLow)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
Sir William Osler The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
  • Ain't that the truth! -Charles T. Low
movie: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  • Mrs. Greenslade:
    Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected.
    Mrs. Donnelly:
    Most things don't. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff.
  • Mrs. Greenslade:
    The only real failure is the failure to try. And the measure of success is how we cope with disappointment, as we always must.
    ... But it's also true that the person who risks nothing, does nothing ... has nothing.
Julia Child The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.
-on a Winnipeg storefront: If a door closes, open it again. It's a door. That's how it works.
Warren Buffett Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.
Tragically Hip
The Last of the Unplucked Gems
I'm kind of dumb and so are you.
Forrest Gump I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happenin' at the same time.
Mahatma Gandhi I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.
Socrates (470-399 BC) The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Henry David Thoreau The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Wayne Gretzky You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
(I suspect that he meant in photography.)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
Michelangelo I am still learning. (age ~87)
Quoting!

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Quotations, first posted 2005-12-03
#ctLow #CharlesTLow -updated: 2023-03-15